iPhone/iPad iOS music making app round-up: Week 28

Steinberg LoopMash, n-Track Studio, Hohner Squeezeboxes and more

The iPhone strikes back

After a few weeks when it seemed like the entire iOS music making scene was shifting exclusively to the iPad, it’s good to see the iPhone and iPod touch getting more of a look in. Make no mistake: Apple’s smallest mobile devices can still help you to get your tune-crafting kicks.

Steinberg LoopMash, £2.39

Steinberg’s LoopMash tool was first seen in Cubase 5, and now it’s found its way onto the iPhone. This version enables you to mix and match the 250 supplied loops to create grooves, and there are effects, too. The emphasis is very much on user-friendliness and having fun, but there’s nothing wrong with that.

Shaoduo Xie Audio Lab, £0.59

Compatibility: iPad (requires iOS 4.2 or later)

The iPad gets another modular synth: connect sound modules and other components to create instruments. Your creation can be played via the built-in keyboard, and the developer says that additional modules and features will be added in the future.

Wallander Instruments WI Guitar, £11.99

Wallander is responsible for several acclaimed ‘real instrument’ emulations on the Mac and PC, and now it’s releasing what it’s calling “the first truly playable virtual acoustic guitar app”. It’s strummable, based on patent-pending sampling technology and promises both authentic sound and expressiveness. A free version is also available.

Liine Kapture Pad, £3.49

Another Ableton Live companion app from Liine, this one enables you to ‘Kapture’ and trigger snapshots of your set on the fly. Global snapshots store mixer and device parameters for all tracks and all devices, while Track snapshots allow morphing between four snapshots on a track using the Morph Pad.

Tiv Studio Beat Twirl, £5.99

As the screenshot above probably suggests to you, Beat Twirl is a beat slicer. You can record your own loops and the tempi of these can be changed without affecting the pitch, while there are also sound replacement options (a library of percussion samples is included).

n-Track n-Track Studio, £2.39

This multitrack recording app is the latest title to make the leap from desktop computers to iOS. It gives you a ‘virtually unlimited’ track count, audio editing features and the option to mixdown to a WAV file. Projects can also be loaded into the Mac/PC version of n-Track Studio.

Michael Eskin Hohner Squeezeboxes, £1.19 each

Compatibility: iPad (requires iOS 4.2 or later)

Hohner has released a cool half-dozen Squeezebox apps, all of which are based on the keyboard layout of its Corona Classic diatonic accordion. The idea is that they play and sound like the real thing: you touch for the push notes and lift your finger for the pull notes. The five main apps are iPad exclusives, while the Hohner-Mini is for the iPhone/iPod touch.

Martian Storm Ltd Chord Detector, £1.79

If you’ve ever been listening to a song on your iPod and wondered what its chords are, this app might be able to help. You can adjust the chord detection configuration to achieve the best results, and they can be viewed in scrolling or tabular formats. For guitarists, there’s even capo support.